Voices from Iran

Iranians abroad are using
every means available to follow events in their homeland and stand alongside
their compatriots. One of them, Kamin Mohammadi, reports.

If my experience is any guide, Iranians outside
Iran are living some of the most intense days of their lives. Since the first,
disputed results of the presidential election were announced soon after the
polls closed on 12 June 2009 and the protests almost immediately started, my
waking hours are absorbed- hour-by-hour, even minute-by-minute - in gathering
computer-delivered news about what is happening in my homeland.

Martial Law - by Nikahang Kowsar

It is compulsive, and also complicated. The
intense emotional engagement brings with it far more unease than satisfaction.
The process of digesting the news from family and friends in Iran that clogs my
inbox, of following multiple links to blogs, of watching sometimes
horrific videos, leaves me at once outraged and energised yet also sickened and
paralysed into inaction and silence. If there is a pattern to these feelings, it
lies in an often wild pendulum-swing between a vague sense of hope and elation,
and deep shame and depression.

The shame is hard: that even while people were
being beaten and shot in Tehran on 20 June, police were waiting at the hospitals
to arrest or take down the names of the injured - the foretaste of a midnight
visit to their homes from the basij
militias; that while the regime was killing its own people, it was the
foreign embassies that opened their doors to the wounded to help us.

But the pride too is profound: in the
fearlessness of my compatriots; in the humanity and solidarity that binds us, a
reminder of the Persian poet Sa'adi's words
- as true today as when they were written in the 13th-century - "The children of
Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence"; and in the
defiant night-time chants of allahu akbar (God is great) that arise
from the Tehran rooftops, at once an echo of the 1979
revolution, an eerie act of resistance, and a desperate call for mercy
and strength.

In 1978-79, these cries were symbolic of
opposition to the Shah's tyranny and the much-proclaimed gharbzadegi (westoxification)
of Iranian society, and of the call for a returnto the core Shi'a
Muslim values that a vast majority of Iranians held dear. Now, they are being
raised against the architects of the Islamic Republic themselves, the very men
who helped
Ayatollah Khomeini shape the regime that he called "God's government".

An epic
struggle for the soul of this government is now being waged in the
regime's upper echelons. The people of Iran - voters, citizens, students,
protestors,
women and men, exiles, those resident abroad - are looking on, seeking
to make their voices heard.

Amid the storm

A friend who works for the provincial governor of
one of Iran's remoter
provinces tells me: "The people know that this is not about regime
change. Most people want Iran to remain an Islamic Republic. But they feel that
perhaps there is a way open to them now to improve things a little from within
the system. At least to keep alive the republican elements of the system that
[Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's years in power have been eroding."

The leading opposition candidate
Mir-Hossein Moussavi may be depicted in the west as an outsider to the
regime but Iranians know that he is part of the religious establishment and
hardly a radical. "We voted for him because he is the only one who spoke even a
little to our concerns", says a 30-year-old, Bijan. "We thought that perhaps,
being so well-established in the regime would give him the ability to really
change things."

Bijan belongs to that burgeoning majority of
Iranians (upwards of 70%) who were born since the revolution of 1979 or were
then small children. These young people barely remember the events of thirty
years ago, and they are not demanding a change to the system of Islamic rule.
Above all else they are pragmatic, sharing little of the idealism of their
parents who took part in the revolution; and this pragmatism makes them shy away
from anything but a gradual loosening of the regime's tight grip on their civil
liberties.

"People are angry and they have had enough", says
Sara, a journalist in Tehran, "The last four years have been really difficult
but we have all sat quietly like good children and waited for a legal
opportunity to vote for change. Then with this cheating they have really
insulted our intelligence. It was too obvious. People are really fed up. It
sticks in our throats."

Sara herself was arrested and hit with batons
during the post-election protests in Tehran. She tells me that Tehran is quiet
now because there are police and militia everywhere. "It's like martial law. The
plainclothes guys" - a reference to the basij -"are everywhere on their
motorbikes, with batons in their hands. They are patrolling the streets, hiding
themselves in each corner. They do what they like. The university is quiet today
- I think they have postponed exams - but I don't think it means the protests
are over. The flames are still alive under the ashes of Saturday..."

Heavy presence of security forces on the streets of Tehran on
Saturday June 20th
photo by Syma Sayyah

Bijan informs me that state television - the only
kind available now that satellite channels have been scrambled - has been laying
the groundwork for the regime's
violence, which is consciously planned. "They broadcast nationalistic
programmes and in between, they have phone-ins in which people support
Ahmadinejad and say the protestors are vandals and destroying their livelihoods.
These people asking for more force from the government, for the army to be
called in to protect them. I don't know if they are real opinions or just
planted by the regime, but in any case, they are preparing people for what might
still come - massive bloodshed."

Another friend in Tehran says: "The
demonstrations now are happening in complete silence, and on the pavements
instead of the roads - to give the basij no reason to retaliate. Also
to stop the regime being able to blame the unrest on 'terrorists', which is what
they have been doing."

Sara tells me that state
television's portrayal of the terrible confrontations of 20 June - when
live rounds were fired on protestors and teargas was used - highlights scenes in
which protestors chased and beat members of the security forces. The narrative
implies that they are terrorists from groups such as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK)
supposedly backed by the west. "People are getting their news from each other,
although most mobiles stop working in the late afternoons and evenings. Since
the election we haven't been able to send text-messages. The internet is
censored and getting online is very difficult. The connection speed is down, and
skype was scrambled too. But we find our ways, we are used to working around the
system."

Ahmad, a university student from Shiraz - where,
as in Tehran and other cities, there have been bloody attacks on campuses - is
both elated and apprehensive by what has been happening. "There will be plenty
more bloodshed before any further developments take place. The basij
are not shooting, but they are hitting young people on the head with the end of
their rifles, and they have been attacking dormitories."

In face of power

What of the titanic political
struggle behind the scenes? Bijan says: "Everyone is looking at [former
president, Hashemi] Rafsanjani to see what he will do. The rumour is that he is
in Qom rallying support from the ayatollahs. The public's opinion of Moussavi
has massively improved since the supreme leader's speech on Friday. People feel
that now he will go down in history, and they are willing to forget his past. He
has a clean slate now..."

I tell Bijan that Rafsanjani is being called a
reformist in the west. We laugh at the absurdity of a situation in which one of
the richest and (it is commonly believed) most corrupt conservatives in the land
- the man whose unpopularity in 2005 was a key to Ahmadinejad's ascent to power
- is now viewed as a figurehead of rebels.

This very Iranian irreverence towards power is
itself a force of resistance. Sara says: "We are scared and depressed. You can
see the depression on the faces of the people. But there are jokes doing the
rounds too. That's how we have borne the last thirty years - by laughing at the
mullahs. And God help us, whatever they do to us, we will keep laughing at
them."